Tuesday, 18 February 2014

Hannah Höch studied art in the Berlin of the early 1900s and was an important member
of the Berlin Dada group, exhibiting at the First International Dada Fair in
1920. The exhibited works at the Whitechapelcome from international collections
and shows more than 100 of Höch's works, the first major exhibition of her work
in the UK.

The
Whitechapel Gallery has excelled itself in introducing the artist and her
paintings, photomontages, collages and lino- and woodcuts, both in the
galleries and in a series of events running over the next weeks (see below).

Her
use of paint, photomontage and material taken from magazines and journals to
create new works is exemplary. Look what she does with figures torn from
illustrations in the series “From an Ethnographic Museum”. In the work shown
here, she paints a background of gouache and adds that eye. A piece of ancient
artefact comes alive for a moment.

Seek
out Mutter (Mother) in Gallery 1. How
many ways can you read this work? With collage and watercolour Höch shows you
first the tired – jaded? – eye of the mother. The second eye is morphed into a
tiny stone crater – unseeing (of the faults of her children? Of what is going
on around her in Weimar Germany?) It was painted in 1925–26, a period of the greatest
social upheaval. The work also references the inanimate being that the living mother
will become, a sign of the transition going on around her. It can immediately be seen what a huge influence works such as
this have had on the practise of photomontage let alone the practise of satire. It has been lent by the Centre
Pompidou.

Höch
works with devastating irony. Two Faced (Zweigesichtig)
shows the uptilted “social” face and the Janus side – the private face –
downturned, sadder, ashamed, wiser, more knowing – a true psychological study
of the times. Note the skill with which the artist uses the dot matrix print format to
model the faces.

Höch's themes range from the simple and exquisite – The Blue Page (Das blaue Blatt), watercolour on tracing
paper – to the strident, satirical humour of her famous Anti-Review studies of Berlin
Cabaret and the well observed studies of children (titles such as “The Sweet
One”, and “Our Dear Little Ones” tell us her private thoughts as she models these
distorted depictions of children, eyes swollen with unshed tears, mouths open in
yells of outrage).

Nor
is she afraid to signal the reaction of non-Germans to the scenes around them.
In Der Baske (The Basque) we see the
eyes of the Catalan visitor wide open in astonishment, the mouth agape, the
face almost doubled up in its effort to suppress the stranger's reaction to the scenes
around him.

Her
contemporaries and admirers included Theo van Doesburg, George Grosz, Piet
Mondrian and Kurt Schwitters. For them she was no doubt an example of the strange
breed known as the “new woman”. It is left to us to properly assess her work
simply as an artist.

Admission Admission to Hannah Höch (15 January -
23 March) costs £9.95/£7.95 concessions (includes £1 voluntary Gift Aid
donation). Free for Whitechapel Gallery Members and a guest. Please click here to book
tickets in advance (no booking fee required). A limited number of tickets will
also be available to purchase on the door (last admission 30 minutes before
closing).

Please
note that due to the popularity of the exhibition, advance booking is strongly
recommended.